Nothing fake about The Onion's move

When acclaimed satirical weekly The Onion announced in the fall that it was moving its editorial operations from New York to Chicago, much of Manhattan broke off and floated away on the Hudson, a plague of locusts descended on Brooklyn and the entire writing staff quit in protest.

OK, that's not exactly what happened.

But a handful of writers have refused to move with The Onion, which started as a student publication at the University of Wisconsin and is returning to its Midwestern roots, bringing with it a 24-year tradition of fake news, an expanding media empire and at least some of its wildly creative staff.

While the country seems at times to be drowning in satire and parody — on cable, the Internet and elsewhere — The Onion staked out its territory early and has retained its brand power, though the recession wasn't good to the company.

Consolidating operations in River North, home to its business office and sister entertainment publication A.V. Club since 2007, The Onion's 100 or so employees will all be under one roof when the move is completed in July, with some notable exceptions. Nearly a third of 23 New York-based editorial staffers rejected a relocation package, including top editor Joe Randazzo, prompting concerns that the paper may lose its comedic edge.

For Steve Hannah, a longtime Milwaukee newspaperman who has been The Onion's CEO, president and resident faculty adviser since 2004, a sense of humor and fiscal sense are not mutually exclusive.

"We wrote clever, funny jokes that put us on the map between a bunch of cornfields in Wisconsin," said Hannah, 63. "We can certainly do it in Chicago, and at a price that will allow us to grow our company and remain independent."

The move promises to shore up finances at The Onion, the masthead for websites, video production and the namesake free weekly, which is distributed, printed and marketed across the country by 15 partners, including the Chicago Tribune. Its September announcement also sparked something of a civil war, with East Coast staffers going so far as to broker a failed buyout in an effort to avoid moving to the hinterlands of the Midwest.

A number of key editorial staffers are coming, however, bolstered by the return of founding editor Scott Dikkers, who was lured back to The Onion for the third time since he helped create the offbeat periodical as a 22-year-old student in 1988.

"Scott Dikkers is coming back as the editor-in-chief and general manager," Hannah said. "Scott is the guy who invented The Onion's comedic conceit, he invented The Onion's sense of humor."

Once a low-budget vehicle for sophomoric humor and Madison, Wis.-area pizza coupons, The Onion has graduated into a national phenomenon. It has a weekly circulation of about 500,000, more than 10 million unique monthly visitors to its websites and annual revenue in the "tens of millions," according to Hannah. Along the way it has shed its student owners for corporate investors and diversified its offerings, spawning everything from TV shows and best-selling books to an eminently forgettable Onion movie.

The growth spurt started with the 1996 launch of TheOnion.com, which helped propel the publication to national prominence. In 2001, money manager David Schafer bought a majority stake, and the editorial staff relocated to New York, leaving the headquarters behind in Wisconsin and satellite sales offices scattered nationwide. A former executive editor at the Milwaukee Journal, Hannah bought a minority interest and took the helm three years later.

The Onion cemented its place in New York and lost its moniker as a Madison-based publication in the wake of 9/11, when it dared to fire back at the terrorists with humor.

"Moving to New York nationalized us," said Dikkers, 47, settling into his new office and old role last week in Chicago. "It also made us a lot of new fans, when our first issue ended up being the Sept. 11th issue."

Dikkers moved to New York concurrently with The Onion, but he wasn't working for the paper at that time. He came back as editor from 2005 to 2008 to help start up the video arm of The Onion, notably Onion News Network, a Web-based parody of CNN that carved out new turf in a crowded field, winning a prestigious Peabody Award for its efforts in 2008.

Though broadcast news parodies are nothing new — "Saturday Night Live" has been doing its "Weekend Update" since 1975, and both "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" have built large and loyal followings with their fake news shows — the award citation noted that Onion News Network set itself apart with its "worrisome ring of truth" sustained by shrewdly edited sound bites: